234 LUTHER BURBANK 



accomplishment; that combinations between the 

 next higher divisions, genera, were beyond the 

 power of man to effect. 



Then when I was able, after a time, to take 

 parents of two different genera, like the crinum 

 and the amaryllis, and a score of others 

 which might be mentioned, and to effect suc- 

 cessful seed-producing combinations between 

 them, I began to hear less and less about laws 

 and rules. 



The fact is that the laws and the rules are too 

 often man-made. 



Nature, herself, has no hard and fast mode of 

 procedure. She limits herself to no grooves. She 

 travels to no set schedule. 



She proceeds an inch at a time — or a league — 

 moving always, but apparently into an un- 

 mapped, uncharted, trackless future. 



I like to think of nature's processes as end- 

 lessly flowing streams in which varied strains of 

 heredity are ever pouring down through river 

 beds of environment; streams which, for ages, 

 may keep to their channels, but each of which 

 is apt, at any time, to jump its banks and find a 

 different outlet. 



Just about the time we decide that one of 

 these streams is fixed and permanent, there is 

 likely to come along a freshet of old heredity, or 



